Partnership Context of First Births in Russia: The Enduring Significance of Marriage

Evgeny M Andreev,Elena Churilova,Aiva Jasilioniene

doi:10.1007/s10680-021-09600-5

Abstract

While cohabitation and non-marital childbearing have been increasing in Russia since 1990, the share of marital first births that are conceived prior to marriage has changed very little since the Soviet era. The prior findings on the stability of trends in premarital conceptions in Russia have been contradictory and inconclusive. This study aims to extend the existing empirical evidence on premarital conceptions in Russia and to contribute to the discussion on the persistence of marriage as the preferred partnership context for parenthood. We focus on births that occurred within the first two years of marriage, and compare the childbearing patterns of Russian women who married in different historical periods. For our investigation of fertility among marital cohorts who married during the Soviet era (1960–1991), we use individual-level data from the 1994 microcensus. For our examination of fertility among more recent marital cohorts (2000, 2011, and 2016), we draw on data from birth records in civil registers. We also use relevant complementary data sources. Our findings show that there has been a marked shift in the relationship between conception and marriage in Russia. Increasingly, conceptions have been occurring before marriage, and in the most recent marital cohorts, the level of premarital first conceptions has even surpassed the level of marital first conceptions. The average interval between conception and entry into marriage has also been lengthening. We describe this unique pattern of childbearing and discuss some potential explanations for the ongoing association between marriage and childbearing in Russia.

Highlights

Over the past three decades in Russia, family formation and fertility patterns have changed substantially
For our investigation of women in the 2000 marital cohort, we used birth record data for 2000–2002, i.e. we looked at first births that occurred within two years of marriage
Among women who married in the 1960s, the largest number of first births occurred in the ninth month of marriage

Summary

Introduction

Over the past three decades in Russia, family formation and fertility patterns have changed substantially. Cohabitation has become more widespread, nonmarital births have increased, and people are increasingly postponing marriage and childbearing. In the period between the mid-1980s and the beginning of the 2000s, marriage and fertility in Russia underwent changes that were more profound than those that occurred in the preceding 50 years. The mid-1960s marks the point in time when the major transformation in union formation and childbearing behaviour began in Europe. These changes have unfolded very differently across European countries. According to the narrative of the second demographic transition (SDT), changes in fertility and family formation occur in sequence, with one event triggering the (Van de Kaa, 2002). The downward trend in the proportion of premarital conceptions was accompanied by an increase in the proportion of births that occurred within cohabitation (Gibson-Davis & Rackin, 2014; Holland, 2013)

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